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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Agreed. Giving everyone a participation trophy is not what this game is about. PvE instances, which undermines the underlying risk/reward system that this entire game is based around, are not going to be relevant beyond story or low-end content. If that doesn't appeal to some players, then that's fine, this game is not the WoW 2.0 that they are looking for. AoC will be just fine without them, because clearly (judging by the amount of hype on a game still 2 years out from release) a lot more people are excited about the new proposed systems.
Not exactly a great argument - though you obviously know that. I'm curious, what exactly is it you think risk is in an MMO?
All we stand to ever lose in a game like Ashes is time - and so risk is simply the loss of time. It may be time you have already spent on somethign that you now need to do again (losing raw materials on death) or it may be time that you need to spend after the fact in order to make up for what was taken (experience debt). Simple fact is, the only thing at risk is time.
Spending 4 hours trying and failing to kill an encounter in PvE is the same in regards to risk vs reward as spending 4 hours harvesting raw materials and then being killed in PvP. In both cases, you spent four hours doing a thing, and in both cases you have nothing to show for it (though the PvE situation will see you with a mountain of experience debt to make up).
Spending 4 hours with a raid of 40 people is akin to spending a total of 160 hours on a piece of content - which is a whole lot of risk if unsuccessful.
To say there is no risk due to a combat tracker is to not understand what risk in an MMO actually even is.
Vanguard and Archeage are two great examples of games with massive hype and player interest before launch that died out within 6 months of going live, due to the systems in each game not really complementing each other nearly as well as the developers thought they would.
Right now, Ashes systems are looking like they will sustain the game for no more than 18 months before server mergers are required.
The way the game is, PvP players will chase away other PvP players - this is what PvP does. Since there is no real reason to play the game other than for PvP, this will result in a permanant decline of population. If you want to hold a stable population, you need to give people something to do other than PvP.
That doesn't mean you reduce the PvP, it means you give people other things to do.
That way, you have a solid group of players running PvE content, who are then generating PvP content for others. This is the only way a game like Ashes can survive - and indeed is the foundation Intrepid are building the game on.
The only problem is, those PvE players generating that PvP content for PvP players are not going to even start playing the game without some top end instances.
I see you edited your post. So i retook your quote from my quote.
I could start by pointing out that it is not even close to an answer to the question. I could point out how often a PvP setting is completely known. I could point out that due to randomization of encounter mechanics, no PvE encounter in Ashes will ever be completely known.
I also don't see how a quote from myself in regards to instanced content allowing the content develop (not the content consumer) to be able to set up an environment that is completely known to that content developer has any relevence to the situation.
Any of these could be a starting point - but I think since it is so far off any reasonable reply, I can't really do anything other than assume it is a non-comment designed to deflect the question as to what you think risk actually is.
Hi there!
To be fair, ArcheAge started with a subscription model too. There are always reasons why there will be a cash shop. Its obvious for mtx, that could be pure greediness or in ArchAge´s case the need of additional income.
I dont think it was all fine with AA but i played it just a few months because of several reasons of the game design itself.
So maybe its just not the goal of Steven and Intrepid to have a big community and diverse playerbase. This could be the point and then i absolutely understand why they would not have the classical pve playerbase.
After BDO i just have no trust in this pure open world design but i have a eye on it...
Just for the record BDO is also extremely pay 2 win.
I sort of have a hard time thinking that a large group of players that are playing MMOs for instances are going to stick around for some limited version of this being proposed. Why wouldn't these guilds and players just seek out a game that has unlimited instanced raiding? lol.
I think the reality is there is very niche group of players that want the open world freedom of choice model AND also high level instance content. It imo likely explains why it has mostly just been a very limited number of you advocating for this. Now I could be wrong, maybe you're the silent majority and in that case I'll gladly admit I'm wrong if the masses want to come out in support of this concept. However until that happens It really seems that you would be asking IS to revise their game design to accommodate a really small player base.
Just to expand on why I'm saying this, if you read through the threads that @Noaani @CaptnChuck and maybe 1-2 others get heavily involved in you'll notice that you guys dominate +/- 50% of each page of a thread (take page 14 of this thread, some are worse) the two of you account for 12/28 replies compared to about 8 other players making up the other 16 replies. This is relatively consistent throughout this entire thread and others. I can count on 1 hand the number of people constantly arguing for this- I think your expectation of "large" player base because of this is misguided or in self interest only.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Hi, dont want to jump again in this, i think its more then enough said on this topic.
But just a few words to you. If you expect a playerbase by the interests of active conversations in this forum you wont have any playerbase at all. There are so many people out there who we dont know and they dont know AoC yet. So yes people here writing they´re own 5 cents. Nobody is talking for millions of people. We´re not any political so you just point something you already did too! Your point of view, its legit and plausible but dont judge other for their opinion. Im neither misguided or selfish at all. I dont think the people you are pointing wanted a single player game at all. Just stay fair maybe you´re good and they bring your kind of game. Im ok with it.
All good to you guys
PvE is inherently much less difficult than PvP. Once you or someone else solves the puzzle and creates a guide, you can just following a script to beat the PvE content. With PvE, you are fighting an enemy that is static and more and more predictable over time. Therefore, this lowers the bar on skill, and instead focuses on route memorization and time investment.
There are a large percentage of PvErs that do not want to PvP because they know they aren't skilled enough to win. I've seen that attitude on this very forum, people saying that they are older now, and know they won't be competitive in PvP, so they ask for more instanced PvE content. Maybe you're not one of those people, but they undeniably exist. There are plenty of MMOs where you can beat up on static PvE content without any risk of open world PvP. MMOs should've never gone down this route in the first place imo. It's such a waste to have a game that can support thousands of players on the same server only to have them segregated into little instances playing co-op linear content with no interaction to the huge open world. It's tragic, really.
While Archeage was pay to win from the start, it didn't become too much of an issue until the game was over a year old.
Trion saw the population of the game drop off far more than they expected in the games first 6 - 9 months, and so ramping up the cash shop was all they could do to keep the game live (since making actual changes to the game was up to XL, and Trion had no real influence over XL at all).
So many people blame Archeages failure purely on the cash shop, but the game was always going to be a failure due to it's design.
If a guild only wants instanced raiding, they won't come to Ashes.
Thing is at least outside of WoW (I can't really speak to what most players in that game may think), that isn't what most raiders want.
The instances should not be there as the only content these people run - which is specifically why I have said around three is perfect. They are there to ensure everu guild has something to do.
IMagine you are looking at bringing a guild to Ashes 6 months after the games goes live. You know without a doubt that you will not be able to take on open world content against guilds with 6 months worth of gear progression, raid setup, learning spawn timers and understanding the node systems influence on content. This is something that is blatantly obvious - that new guild has no chance at all on open world content.
Add a few instances to the mix though, and that new guild has content in which they can learn how to set up a raid. They will have the ability to obtain a few top end items - though they will quickly realize it will not be enough in itself as they will never catch up to the existing guilds, but they get a start.
To this guild (or any guild deciding to get in to raiding a little late) these instanced encounters will essentially be the only way they can get a foot in the door. WIthout something like this, any guild deciding they want to try their hand at raiding any time after about the 3rd month of the game going live is going to have a near impossible time of it.
This is also why suggestions of content that is open world in terms of spawning, but is blocked off from intervention isn't going to solve the issue here. That content is great (again, it is my single favorate type of MMO content), but it won't allow new guilds to get that first step towards raiding.
In PvP, there is always a winner. Usually, 50% of the people participating win.
In PvE, you do not win 50% of the time against top end content. You will often die several hundred times before you get a single kill.
If someone writing up a guide and script for you to follow is all you need to win PvE, then you are not taking on top end PvE, you are taking on low end.
Now, I totally agree that low end PvE is much easier than PvP, but I don't really care about low end PvE.
Also, most of the people saying they are not skilled in PvP are not asking for instanced content. Most such comments are actually in relation to action vs tab target combat, saying they want both to be equal in PvE and PvP (I don't expect them to be equal, myself). I'm not saying all of them are, but you can find outliers in any discussion.
It's best to keep the arguemnts being debated to those being made by the people you are debating with. I actually agree with you in part here.
I think the way MMO's have done instances with multiple bosses is a waste of the MMO genre.
To me, a zone like Molten Core should have been an open zone, much larger than it was, but where each boss was in it's own instance.
The notion and reasoning behind instancing content off is 100% solid. Players/guilds need to know they will have some content that is worth running. If not, they are as likely to go bowling as they are to play an MMO - no guarantee of content is a bad business model to run any game on, and games like WoW offer no real content other than dungeons and raids (Ashes offers a few more things, and so I am not arguing that Ashes needs to instance off every named raid mob in the game, only a few).
However, the interaction between raids in an open zone should not rely on raids ganking each other while taking on boss content. Interaction (friendly or not) should be encouraged to take place while fighting base population - or while not fighting at all. Make it so that your zones have their base population greatly expanded (maybe add a few mini-bosses to the mix here) and their actual bosses instanced and you have literally the best of both - guilds know they have content, but they are not locking themselves away in a zone for hours on end away from others.
Make it so a raid can't zone in to an instance if anyone is in combat, and you have a much better situation than either fully open raid zones, or fully instanced raid zones (the absolute of almost anything is never the best answer).
Ok, I don't know what the clear rates are for mythic raids in WoW, but if they are that difficult after knowing how to defeat them, then it is likely because 1 out of the 40 raid members makes a mistake and ruins the entire raid. I don't know, it just doesn't sound fun to me to perform the same actions over and over, and hope that the other 39 members don't make a slight mechanical mistake. I'd rather be outplayed by another player, or outmaneuvered by another guild.
Every pull of a top end encounter is different.
You are not following instructions, you are scrambling to get done what needs to get done (on good encounters, at least).
Yes, 1 player can mess it up, but that will be you as often as it will be anyone else in your raid. If you joined a raid running this content, you would cause these wipes as often as anyone.
What instanced raids are, essentially, is the pinnacle of co-operative content, as opposed to content that is for contention. While I agree that there is nothing at all wrong with content designed for contention, there is also nothing at all wrong with content designed for co-operation. Since games can have both without any negative impacts at all to the game, I see no reason at all why a game should not have both.
I can see arguemnts as to the amount of each a given game should have, but not in regards to whether it should have each type of content or not. Yes, Ashes is more about contention than co-operation, but Steven has said many times he wants to see a game that brings people together as well as pitting them against each other. Based on that, instanced PvE content still fits in with the game, in limited amounts.
The really great thing about a game like Ashes is that you don't need to enjoy that content. If it is in the game, there is no specific reason you would ever need to participate in it. You could even get some of the rewards from that content without participating in it at all, thanks to PvP.
That is my point, having this in Ashes makes your game play better, even if you don't run the content. It will see more people play the game, which gives you more PvP opportunities, and those opportunities will lead to you getting your hands on some of the materials from zones like this.
That means you can still play the game in a way where you are only ever in content that is designed around contention, rather than co-operation. This is obviously a core aspect of Ashes - and no one is trying to make it anything else.
All we are trying to do is make that even more enjoyable for you.
Your entire point stands on your opinion that RISK exists only in regards to PVP. Do you honestly think Ashes is going to be a cookie clicker just providing place to PvP?
― Plato
And they're coming out with Archeage 2. Lmao. I agree with you @Noaani though, you make valid points. I think the people on this thread are just old school people that believes that what worked then will work now. I'm afraid that isn't the case. Whilst open world content is super fun, it isn't always as challenging. Challenge is what drives players. If a game is faceroll, it won't ever be popular, not in this era. L2 and AA may have been challenging for its time, but gamers have gotten a lot better over the years. If you go with that same difficulty, your game is narrowing its potential. You don't have to make PvE content instanced, but it has to be challenging, cuz if its not, you're losing a large amount of your potential player base.
And its not a negligible amount either. Its a lot. However, if AoC wants to focus on a niche PvPvE community, then it may well do so. Its just that, for an MMO that's looking to redefine the genre, that is kind of underwhelming.
There are a very few basic things that the game could have done different that would have made the game far more popular - popular enough that an Archeage 2 wouldn't be needed.
Well, I agree that PVE mechanics of Lineage and Archage may be well outdated, but no PVE content will ever gonna be hard, not in MMORPG. Simply because, with youtube and google, every PVE mechanic will be known, every move will be predictable, unless they will start using deep learning AI. The only way to make anything challenging, is to have you play against other thinking beings, who adapt, change strategy etc. So that's where open world pvp comes in. No raid will be the same because of this and it will always feel like achievement once you killed it.
I assume you do not realise there is content out there in games that was killed single digit times while it was current.
I can think of an encounter that was killed exactly one time before the level cap was increased, and another that was only killed three times. While the game it was in was not the biggest, I know there were 50+ guilds attempting that content weekly for many months.
PvE content can be hard, and develoeprs do not need to rely on players not knowing what is going to happen in order for that to be the case.
Developers can make content difficult due to the stats of the encounter - try killing a raid encounter in any WoW expansion without leveling up to the appropriate level and you will see an encounter that is very difficult (perhaps impossible) due to stats.
Developers can also make content difficult due to adding in difficult mechanics - this could be combat mechanics or non-combat mechanics that need to be achieved during combat.
We all know that you haven't ever seen a top end PvE encounter, this is obvious - but is also perfectly fine. Thing is, you haven't seen any such content, so you shouldn't really speak to what they are or are not, as you do not know.
If you don't want instanced PvE content, cool. Don't make stuff up to attempt to rationalise your position though.
I understand that there should be challenging PvE content. World bosses shouldn't be easy to kill. Even without PvP, the rate of clearing a world boss raid shouldn't be anywhere near 100%.
In my opinion, WoW was harmed by having instanced PvE content. The open world became a waiting room for raids. A lot of people only wanted to participate in raids, and actively lobbied for the removal of anything that forced interaction with the open world. Eventually, the views of this group where so irreconcilable with everyone else that it split the community. Rather than the fundamentally different players coming together to make a better game, it completely divided the community into two worse games. So no, I don't agree with the assumption that instanced PvErs are good for the overall health of a game. A playerbase that is split, and fundamentally likes completely different things, are usually bad for a particular game.
Rather than just complaining, here is a potential solution to making PvE content hard without instancing. You can implement anti zerg mechanics (for example, maybe the boss can be on a platform, where if you exceed a weight threshold, it gets flooded with lava). Beyond anti-zerg, there are many solutions to making it difficult to contest a raid after getting wiped.
Yea but that's true for everything. Which nodes are better, which raids give you better gear, which skills are better for PvP etc., all of this will eventually be available on youtube, google etc. So you shouldn't use that as an excuse.
As long as you keep creating new content and keep balancing said content, it won't be a problem.
Also, just because you know a PvE mechanic doesn't mean that you/your group will be able to react to it perfectly. You can also circumvent it by introducing a large amount of mechanics so that only players that are truly skilled get to clear certain content.
Exactly, MMO is about people playing in the same world, interacting with each other. With all the instancing, then it becomes online co-op game, not MMO.
MMO game cannot include any co-op activities, because it stops being an MMO
open world is supposed to include a giant variety of activities and not only those that you prefer. If you don't want to participate in that content then don't demand for it to not exist
― Plato
You are seeing an issue of a game misuing instancing as a game system, and so are saying the solution to it is to remove all instancing.
I am seeing an issue of a game misusing instancing as a game system, and so I am saying the solution is to correctly use instancing.
I have said on these forums that I barely consider WoW to be an MMO due to both it's instanced nature, and how easy it is to get in to an instance. I still stand by that opinion.
A few instances each containing exactly one encounter that are all location at the bottom of PvP enabled dungeons that players have no option of teleporting to does not remove players from the open world in a meaningful way - it is proper use of instancing as a game system.
All those servers in MMO's that are not PvP servers are also somehow not MMO servers, even though the PvP ones are, am I right?
Hold up Noaani, that's not what he's trying to say.
He's pointing out that instancing destroys the concept of a single shared world, turning the world into a lonelier place where you only ever share a map with 4 people --> it's removing the massive from MMO.
Also, I get the feeling Tragnar is being sarcastic - but it's hard to say.
If that is the specifics of how they want to be wrong, they should be more specific in how they write their post.
This is why short posts are not always a good idea - it is more important to get your point across clearly than it is to drop a few dozen words.
I would agree that WoW levels of instancing destroys the open world nature of MMO's. But that isn't what is being asked for here. What is being asked for will absolutely destroy the ability for players to be able to attack a rival raid while they are taking on a very small number of boss encounters. However, you will be able to attack that rival on the way to that encounter, on the way back to that encounter, while fighting base poplation, while fighting other boss encounters in the open dungeon - there is still 99% of the open world present - and that is in a literal sense.
Those mechanics were already soft-designed into Lineage 2.
AoC is yet to announce their solutions for anti-zerg - which is strongly related to your concerns.
You're literally concerned about something that hasn't even had an opportunity to be tested.
Plus, if they do anything like Lineage 2, there will probably be an entrance that needs to be claimed and only the winning guild will be able to go through (or something along those lines) but it won't be instanced so you can still watch from the outside.
Wait for when you can test the raid and then give feedback on how difficult the raid was. Or what mechanics you want to see in the raid. Or how unfair the raid is. Stop deciding the raid is too easy before there even is a raid.